ChaosOp

Fair enough, thanks for the feedback. it was my attempt to test whether it would make it even more easier to start up the games and then also think of translating the small in-game tips as well

I just sent an email to you!

That's a good idea and something I've already toyed around a bit. Currently I'm having problems with iOS devices randomly crashing out due to some obscure memory limitation. I need to find a way to work around that and then could deploy that for others to test as well. I agree that it would remove quite a lot of friction and make the games even more accessible to players

Yes it does work with actual controllers as well! I've tested it with Xbox and Joy-Con controllers but any controller that you can connect to the central screen should work. Let me know if you have any problems connecting and I'll see what I can do.

Nice to hear you had fun! The parking games are some of the most divisive games we have, either people love them or hate them with a passion. Some have even sent me messages that they'd like to pay just to skip the parking games altogether, haha :D

With regards to monetization, I opened it up a bit down the chain but the main point was that nothing is yet set in stone. I'd like to keep it as easily accessible as possible so everyone can play regardless of if they have the means to pay or not. Naturally this would drive me towards ads, but I don't want to turn the platform to "Hulu" with their annoying ads. If the service would have ads, in my opinion it should also have a way to turn them off, this could be done via subscription or similar method for those wanting to support the project and possible get few extra-perks.

With regards to 3rd party developers who develop games for the platform, I think it would be fair to implement some kind of revenue share model, which could be based on e.g. minutes played so the most liked and played games also get rewarded.

But as nothing is yet implemented, this is still very much in the air and I'm very open to any suggestions!

Thank you for the kind words! AirConsole's original idea was to replace your dedicated gaming consoles with the web, hence the name "AirConsole". I don't want to do that, because I don't think the web is ready for that, at least yet.

Instead I want to focus on very short action-based party mini-games. All of the mini-games are tied together via a scoreboard & party voting system. While each of the mini-games might look different, the goal is always the same (be the last player standing to gather most points). In the end, after 5, 10, 15 or 20 mini-games you'll get to see who will be crowned the king of the Gaming Couch. The emphasis is on the social aspect of gaming as opposed to individual game lore or intricate game mechanics

For sure only one out of the party should ever need to buy anything in order to play. I think the model could work but there should also be some way to test drive the games before buying, otherwise it could be very hard to know which individual games to buy?

Ah right, I see what you mean. For that specific purpose I remember seeing some other software like Virtual Gamepad and Remote Gamepad that should let you use your phone as controller for Steam games. Haven't tested those out myself though

Thanks! Should be fun family time, unless there's a lot of competitive sprits running in the family, then it just might cause chaos :D

Thanks! What game was it if you don't mind me asking?

Haha, I also have a background in law (in addition to the programming) and I've found that a stark context switch from e.g. reviewing contracts to writing code keeps the brain quite young! Or then it just deteriorates the brain faster and I'm already starting to rot... I guess the future will tell

Exactly this! Translating the games themselves is not a big deal as that can be automated (although the quality of LLM-translations is not always the best) but when it comes to user generated responses given in a quick timeframe, that's when non-native english players struggle the most, at least in our own friend groups.

This is in the plans! Currently working on 3rd party game development SDK and the pipeline to support uploading your own games to the platform

Thank John! Def. give Gametje a try as well, great games and even greater guy behind it :)

Yup, I've thought exactly same before starting the development of Gaming Couch. Jackbox was the go-to easiest (in terms of accessibility and funniness) for my friend groups but had it's shortfalls which I'd thought I could fix so here we are! Let me know what you think of the games once you get to try them :)

Somehow I've totally missed pokemon stadium minigames even though I did play a lot of pokemon back in the day. Or maybe my memory is just not what it used to be. Either way, thanks for mentioning them and hope you have a great gaming session later on!

Thanks! The community ratings & games is something I've been thinking of as well. I wrote a more detailed reply of the system I've envisioned above :)

It's not open source but in the future once the 3rd party game development SDK has been published, community contributed games can be a reality.

The way I've been thinking it could work is that developers can upload their own games to the platform and by default the games would only be visible under their own accounts and in order to play the uploaded game the developer account would have to be in the session.

Then if the developer would like to publish their game for others to play as well they could just check a box. After that the game would go to a "New drops" playlist where players everywhere can test out different new games and rate them at the end. The games gathering most votes would then be upgraded to the main playlists. In a nutshell the system would work somewhat similar to HN frontpage and new submission pools

Yes, few options on the table but nothing set in stone yet. I want to keep the it accessible to as many people as possible, which is why I've been thinking of a 'free'-tier with some advertisements. Though I realize it can't be like Hulu with an aggravating amount of ads as that in itself will be too annoying.

For people who'd like to support the project, get rid of the few ads and possibly also some other extra-features such as in-game avatar wearables or similar, there could be a subscription option as well.

Interested to hear what the options you were thinking of were? Nothing is yet implemented on that regard so this is a good time to influence the outcome :D

I've tested it to work on newer LG TV's but at the moment since the games have not yet been super optimized, it will most likely be somewhat laggy if the TV doesn't have enough computing power. Something to work on for the future since I agree that it would be great to just have the app on a smart tv for super easy accessibility

This is interesting, thanks for sharing! Need to try it out

This is something I've been thinking of as well. There's actually a demo implementation with few games that support fully remote gaming but the problem I've been running into is some memory limitations on iOS devices causing crashes. On Android everything seems to work a-ok. I think the iOS problem can be solved, just will take some time

You are able to mix gamepads and smart phones! Though there is a limit that you can only connect a maximum of 4 gamepads to a single session due to limitations with the JS gamepad API.

Would you be interested in also beta-testing our upcoming 3rd party game development SDK? If so, please ping me on our Discord (link at the end of the gamingcouch.com web page) so I can take your contact details for the beta-testing list :)

Haha, so true! But even if the general idea is the same, there's always a million smaller choices to make it more unique :) I can def. see that a completely LAN-based approach would have its own audience that want to play fully offline games

Thanks! I actually loved the song quiz that was available via the first version of Amazon Echo that worked using voice commands. No idea if that's available any more though.

If you like more quiz like games, I can recommend Kahoot & Gametje for you, which work with a similar phones-as-controllers approach :)

Thank you all for the messages, will be going through them in the coming hours! Was a bit surprised to see this bounce on the front page, but I guess it came from the second chance pool :)

Thanks! Yes, or at least it will be in the future as we have not yet publicly released our SDK's for 3rd party devs :)

What sets us apart from AirConsole is our strict niche focus on real-time action party games and social couch gaming. In practice this means that the games added to our platform's public playlists should adhere to being short, competitive and real-time (no asynchronous or text/language-based trivia games).

AirConsole on the other hand is fully focused on in-car-entertainment at the moment as the whole company was recently sold to a car software manufacturer. My understanding is that they are not accepting any new 3rd party games on the platform apart from few very high-profile games based on already established studios and IP.

Thanks! In case you'd like to give any feedback, there's a link to my Discord server on the footer of the frontpage :)

Thanks, you're absolutely right! The plan is to make individual game pages with little gif/video trailers and brief explanation of the different games but this is just something that I haven't yet gotten around to do :D

The platform uses WebRTC for connections so in the best case scenario (direct peer-to-peer connection): somewhere between 2-10ms. When direct connection is not available, 20-100ms. In really bad network conditions with VPN's in use: 100-300ms. Though usually the latency is not really visible in the games even if there would be larger latency with some players :)